| 6 Quad | ||||||||
| Bilinear | Trilinear | 2xAF | 4xAF | 8xAF | 16xAF | 4xAA Bilinear | 4xAA 16xAF | |
| Min | 69 | 69 | 68 | 68 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 64 |
| Avg | 122.17 | 122.09 | 122.74 | 121.75 | 121.56 | 121.51 | 105.6 | 97.29 |
| Max | 165 | 159 | 168 | 165 | 162 | 165 | 167 | 153 |
| 5 Quad | ||||||||
| Bilinear | Trilinear | 2xAF | 4xAF | 8xAF | 16xAF | 4xAA Bilinear | 4xAA 16xAF | |
| Min | 69 | 69 | 70 | 69 | 69 | 68 | 71 | 62 |
| Avg | 123.25 | 123.02 | 123.17 | 122.58 | 122.06 | 121.33 | 104.63 | 94.2 |
| Max | 168 | 170 | 162 | 168 | 163 | 164 | 170 | 144 |
| 4 Quad | ||||||||
| Bilinear | Trilinear | 2xAF | 4xAF | 8xAF | 16xAF | 4xAA Bilinear | 4xAA 16xAF | |
| Min | 67 | 68 | 69 | 69 | 69 | 69 | 68 | 59 |
| Avg | 122.01 | 121.99 | 122.01 | 122.04 | 121.11 | 120.57 | 103.01 | 90.08 |
| Max | 170 | 167 | 161 | 170 | 171 | 162 | 169 | 138 |
Of course, on a more powerful system the results will be slightly different. Focus on AA and AF results, where we're not as system limited as with just bilinear or even 16x anisotropic filtering. 'Pure' AA performance is pretty much similar with 4, 5 or 6 quads, with differences around 2 - 3 fps overall. So, having more quads won't give you higher frames in Quake 4 (or games that depend mostly on textures). Well, at least in pure AA with bilinear anyway. However, it looks like having more quads does help performance with AA AND AF enabled at the same time. The difference is not noticeable in gameplay, but it's interesting nonetheless. Let's see just how much performance we gain with each quad.
| Bilinear | Trilinear | 2xAF | 4xAF | 8xAF | 16xAF | 4xAA Bilinear | 4xAA 16xAF | |
| 5 to 6 Quad | ||||||||
| Min | 0.00% | 0.00% | -2.86% | -1.45% | -1.45% | 1.47% | -1.41% | 3.23% |
| Avg | -0.88% | -0.76% | -0.35% | -0.68% | -0.41% | 0.15% | 0.92% | 3.28% |
| Max | -1.79% | -6.47% | 3.70% | -1.79% | -0.61% | 0.61% | -1.76% | 6.25% |
| 4 to 5 Quad | ||||||||
| Min | 2.99% | 1.47% | 1.45% | 0.00% | 0.00% | -1.45% | 4.41% | 5.08% |
| Avg | 1.02% | 0.84% | 0.95% | 0.45% | 0.79% | 0.63% | 1.57% | 4.57% |
| Max | -1.18% | 1.80% | 0.62% | -1.18% | -4.68% | 1.23% | 0.59% | 4.35% |
| Per Quad (Average) | ||||||||
| Min | 1.49% | 0.74% | -0.70% | -0.72% | -0.72% | 0.01% | 1.50% | 4.16% |
| Avg | 0.07% | 0.04% | 0.30% | -0.12% | 0.19% | 0.39% | 1.25% | 3.92% |
| Max | -1.48% | -2.34% | 2.16% | -1.48% | -2.65% | 0.92% | -0.59% | 5.30% |
Here we can see the move from 4 to 5 quads provide the highest increase in performance, both with AA and AF enabled and 'pure' AA, although 1 % higher is far from significant (with pure AA). While 6 quads is faster, the increase is actually smaller - probably due to limitations in memory bandwidth (which we'll look into later). What's interesting is that AA and AF gains can be up to three times 'pure' AA gains. This confirms our previous suspicion that having more quads have little to do with the GeForce 7's (and probably GeForce 6 as well) performance with AA, but it will help with AA AND AF. You can say that with each quad, performance under AA and AF gets closer to 'pure' AA levels - giving us almost 'free' anisotropic filtering.
OK, let's see the numbers on the first table in a different light.
| 6 Quad | ||||
| AA (with Bilinear) | AA (with 16x AF) | 16x AF (with Bilinear) | 16x AF (with AA) | |
| Difference (Min) | -1.45% | 7.25% | 0.00% | 8.70% |
| Difference (Avg) | 13.56% | 19.93% | 0.54% | 6.37% |
| Difference (Max) | -1.21% | 7.27% | 0.00% | 8.48% |
| 5 Quad | ||||
| AA (with Bilinear) | AA (with 16x AF) | 16x AF (with Bilinear) | 16x AF (with AA) | |
| Difference (Min) | -2.90% | 8.82% | 1.45% | 11.72% |
| Difference (Avg) | 15.11% | 22.36% | 1.56% | 7.25% |
| Difference (Max) | -1.19% | 12.20% | 2.38% | 13.39% |
| 4 Quad | ||||
| AA (with Bilinear) | AA (with 16x AF) | 16x AF (with Bilinear) | 16x AF (with AA) | |
| Difference (Min) | -1.49% | 14.49% | -2.99% | 15.99% |
| Difference (Avg) | 15.57% | 25.28% | 1.18% | 9.72% |
| Difference (Max) | 0.59% | 14.81% | 4.71% | 14.23% |
We think this table sums it up pretty well. With the same core and memory clock, the GeForce 7 with more quads will have 'faster' anisotropic filtering. Look at the difference between 4, 5 and 6 quads - that's about 2 percent per quad overall. It's closer to 1 percent with 6 quads, but that's very likely caused by limited memory bandwidth. That's something we can work around - just clock the memory even higher.
The question is how much? Unfortunately, this particular card is only stable at around 675 MHz or 1350 MHz effective memory clock. At 1400 MHz, not only are scores lower, but artifacts begin to appear. So, we decided to tackle this matter in a different manner - by clocking down the card. We clocked the card's core from 250 MHz to 500 MHz in 50 MHz increments and the memory from 350 MHz to 650 MHz in 50 MHz increments (or 700 MHz to 1300 MHz effectively in 100 MHz increments). On core measurements, we set the memory clock to 1200 MHz - the default reference clock, while on memory measurements, the core was set to 500 MHz.
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